Imagine an ecommerce platform that allows customer service reps to have a single view of a customer across all channels, a centralized order and inventory management system that can efficiently fulfill orders from all your sales channels, including brick and mortar stores, or utilize a customer's order history data to provide personalized and relevant offers. The possibilities brought to light with the advent of a complete ecommerce platform for business optimization and improved efficiencies as well as deepened customer engagement and satisfaction are limited only by one's creativity.

E-commerce markets are growing at noticeable rates. The online market is expected to grow by 56% in 2015–2020. In 2017, retail e-commerce sales worldwide amounted to 2.3 trillion US dollars and e-retail revenues are projected to grow to 4.88 trillion US dollars in 2021[63]. Traditional markets are only expected 2% growth during the same time. Brick and mortar retailers are struggling because of online retailer's ability to offer lower prices and higher efficiency. Many larger retailers are able to maintain a presence offline and online by linking physical and online offerings.[64][65]

Imagine an ecommerce platform that allows customer service reps to have a single view of a customer across all channels, a centralized order and inventory management system that can efficiently fulfill orders from all your sales channels, including brick and mortar stores, or utilize a customer's order history data to provide personalized and relevant offers. The possibilities brought to light with the advent of a complete ecommerce platform for business optimization and improved efficiencies as well as deepened customer engagement and satisfaction are limited only by one's creativity.
It’s also a good idea to speak to ecommerce consultants and merchants who have experience using the platforms that you’re considering. Ask how each solution compares with other ecommerce platforms. What are their advantages and disadvantages? How much time, money, and work are required to set up and maintain the system? These are just some of the things you should bring up.
An ecommerce platform is not a "one size fits all" solution that will work for everyone. All the ecommerce platforms discussed in this article are built for different kinds of business requirements. The pros and cons outlined are not about what's wrong with them. The curated list is designed to help you make a calculated decision and choose a platform that serves your needs best.
WooCommerce is the most popular WordPress-specific ecommerce plugin. Perhaps its most attractive feature is that it is completely free and open-source. The platform is easily customizable and the WordPress community offers endless support. The plugin is also very regularly updated and very secure. Perhaps the biggest downfall is that WooCommerce requires a knowledge of WordPress because the two are tied together. However, WordPress’ ease of use enables even beginners to start and operate an ecommerce store without advanced technical knowledge.
Hey Darren; that’s really a fantastic article! I assume you’ve put a lot of effort into that but believe me that’s the best comparison of eCommerce platforms I’ve seen so far 🙂 One question popped up on my mind. Do you believe that an eCommerce platform lacks certain competencies if a merchant using that platform needs external apps to support his/her store? I work for an app developer company – so I may be subjective in that sense – but for me eCommerce apps add a lot of value on top of the standard offering of the platforms. For instance, we provide AI powered personalization for the eCommerce websites. An eCommerce platform’s development team do not need to bother creating these competencies in house – and they may not succeed – as this is not their expertise. I’d love to hear about your thoughts 🙂
Selz is very affordable, especially when you consider its features compared to comparably priced ecommerce platforms. Not only is it incredibly easy to use, but it also offers integrations for selling through WordPress, Facebook, and other independent websites. It also offers many security features and customer-friendly delivery options for merchants selling digital products.
SuiteCommerce enables B2B and B2C merchants to rapidly create unique, personalized, and compelling branded shopping experiences across multiple channels. Differentiate your brand and exceed customer expectations, whether it is through mobile, online, or in-person, and empower your sales associates to provide engaging customer acquisition and retention experiences by utilizing a single source of item, inventory, customer and order data to feed your customer-facing systems. SuiteCommerce's integrated cloud-based nature unifies business applications and provides a central repository for order management and customer details, item and inventory data, creates seamless, omni-channel, brand experiences, and streamlines your business for continuous growth.
The ecommerce platforms of today have moved beyond single purpose software that enables people to simply buy products and services online. Today's best cloud-based ecommerce platforms integrate both the front- and back-office systems to provide a unified business environment that is easily scalable, endlessly customizable and provides timesaving automation functionality. Such a platform enables businesses to meet their customers' demands for providing a seamless shopping experience across all channels, and provides the flexibility and adaptability needed to keep up with the pace of business, reduce operational costs, increase efficiencies and eliminate the hassles of managing hardware and software.
IBM WebSphere Commerce enables B2B and B2C merchants to deliver omnichannel shopping experiences. The platform supports ecommerce, mobile, social, and brick-and-mortar. Its B2B ecommerce offering has the capabilities to support complex products and makes digital and field selling more efficient. Its B2C solution on the other hand lets you engage customers with personalised content no matter what channel or device they’re using.
The definition of e-commerce includes business activities that are business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C), extended enterprise computing (also known as "newly emerging value chains"), d-commerce, and m-commerce. E-commerce is a major factor in the U.S. economy because it assists companies with many levels of current business transactions, as well as creating new online business opportunities that are global in nature.

The gap between B2B buyers and sellers has been growing. More than 70 percent of B2B buyers preferred to wait to engage a seller until the latter demonstrated a clear understanding of its needs, a CSO Insights survey found. Nearly 58 percent of buyers saw little difference among sellers, and more than 10 percent saw no difference at all among sellers. [More...]

If you update a Subscription product price from $100 to $120, all those Subscriptions created at $100 are not updated to $120. You have to manually go to EACH subscription and update the price which is very time consuming when you have hundreds or thousands of subscriptions. There should be a bulk way to update all subscriptions pricing without having to go one-by-one through each active subscription.

PayMotion is an award-winning, end-to-end solution for selling products and services online. Through a cloud-based platform, we enable businesses to create customized checkouts, accept a variety of payment methods, localize carts for better conversions, maximize subscriptions and recurring billing, send customized transaction communications, track and manage reselling and integration partners and more. This is combined with PCI DSS Lever 1 Certification, fraud mitigation and free multilingual customer billing support for you and your customers. PayMotion is the complete payment engine of your technology stack with APIs allowing you to integrate the platform's extensive reporting features into your other business platforms.
Your product feed upload won't work if you installed it on your developer site because it's not connected to the Internet. To fix this issue, you'll need to install the Facebook for WooCommerce Extension on your live site instead. Also keep in mind that each of your products need to have a valid description, image, and unique product ID (such as a SKU) for you to be able to upload your products to Facebook.
Akshay is a passionate marketer and enjoys providing innovative and valuable insights to the blog. He is currently the Founder of a Global Content & Growth Marketing Agency, and loves to help startups, agencies and marketing managers grow their business. Interests that excite him include innovation, startups, health & fitness, meaningful experiences, golf & meditation.
In China, the Telecommunications Regulations of the People's Republic of China (promulgated on 25 September 2000), stipulated the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) as the government department regulating all telecommunications related activities, including electronic commerce.[36] On the same day, The Administrative Measures on Internet Information Services released, is the first administrative regulation to address profit-generating activities conducted through the Internet, and lay the foundation for future regulations governing e-commerce in China.[37] On 28 August 2004, the eleventh session of the tenth NPC Standing Committee adopted The Electronic Signature Law, which regulates data message, electronic signature authentication and legal liability issues. It is considered the first law in China's e-commerce legislation. It was a milestone in the course of improving China's electronic commerce legislation, and also marks the entering of China's rapid development stage for electronic commerce legislation.[38]
That said, if you take a look at a comparison on Google Trends, there's only one clear winner in terms of what people are searching and how many of them show interest in the popular consumer ecommerce solutions, but let's hold off on this for a minute. First, have a look at the popularity chart between five of our featured tools: Bigcommerce, Volusion, Big Cartel, 3dcart, Ecwid, across the past 12 months:

Fiverr – This is a “freelance services marketplace” that connects people (mostly entrepreneurs) with service providers who offer anything from graphic design and online marketing to translation and video development. As its name indicates, gig pricing on Fiverr starts at $5 USD, though depending on what you’re selling, that can go up to hundreds, even thousands of dollars.

An increase in demand for convenience and accessibility within the online shopping world has bred subsequent cutthroat competition among ecommerce platforms. Powerful features and useful tools are updated or released daily. In a market chock-full of awesome ecommerce platform solutions, it can be daunting when faced with choosing the best one for your business.
With the holidays fast approaching, are you looking to buy presents online? The holiday season has become synonymous with online shopping. This isn't really surprising as physical stores usually attract crowds of deal hunters. This often conjures up images of throngs of people waiting in line outside the store, some even camping out. This activity is tolerable for some and even fun for others. [More...]

Thank you for this report. It has saved me a lot of time and effort. I do however have one question. I am looking at GoCentral which is GoDaddy’s e-commerce platform. Have you heard anything good or bad about this? I am trying to find out if it has drop shipping integration. There is a charge for each transaction but I am looking for security, ease of use, the best customer service….as I don’t want to wait days to get a response back if I have an issue with my store. Time is money and I would like to use a company that will answer the phone and emails asap. I have always had a great experience with GoDaddy but I didn’t know if you had heard about this service. Any help that you can provide would be great. Thank you!!

Reduced costs. eCommerce businesses benefit from significantly lower running costs. As there’s no need to hire sales staff or maintain a physical storefront, the major eCommerce costs go to warehousing and product storage. And those running a dropshipping business enjoy even lower upfront investment requirements. As merchants are able to save on operational costs, they can offer better deals and discounts to their customers.

Lightspeed Retail is a complete point of sale and inventory management tool that's easy to set up and even easier to use. Used by over 50, 000 businesses across the globe, Lightspeed has helped customers increase their profit by up to 20% in their first year.It simplifies time-consuming tasks like inventory and employee management, so you can focus on taking care of your customers and growing your business. Access detailed sales reports in minutes and easily identify best-selling items or use the built-in customer profiles to provide personalized service that will increase customer loyalty. More than just a cash register, this cloud-based iPad point of sale system allows you to manage your store from anywhere and instantly access your data, so you can benefit from all the tools and knowledge you need to take your store to the next level. Inventory management - Easily create product variations such as size, color and material by using the efficient matrix system. - Combine purchasing, transferring and multiple vendors into one master order. - Process special orders, layaways and work orders. - Create, track, and assign serial numbers to products. - Bundle individual items to sell them as a package. Free Onboarding & 24/7 Support - Benefit from a dedicated team who help you get started in a 1:1 session. - Get live chat support with our support heros located around the world. Reporting - Track sales and inventory numbers with reports that make it easy to see sales, profits and changes over time. - Identify opportunities for growth and business improvement. - Learn which employees are your top performers. - Get a clear view of your customers’ needs and shopping habits. Customers - Track sales history for a more efficient shopping experience and more personalized sales approach. - Record customer information and use it to inform them about deals or new arrivals. Employees - Intuitive, easy-to-learn interface for your employees. - Create a simple and logical workflow that suits your business. - Track sales by employee and access performance reports for your staff. - Control employee access to information such as refunds, the ability to edit products and pricing, or view sales data. Hardware & payments - Integrate your system with hardware such as barcode scanners and cash drawers to reduce checkout times. - Reduce credit card fraud with EMV. - Accept major credit card and Apple Pay®. Integrations - Sell in-store and online with Lightspeed’s fully integrated eCommerce solution, Lightspeed eCom. - Our network of over 250 integration partners allows you to tailor Lightspeed to your business’ needs. Questions? You can always reach our friendly team of specialists by calling 1 855 251 0441 or by going to our support center for helpful tips, training videos and system updates. Lightspeed Retail is a perfect fit for industries such as: apparel, footwear, bike, vape, jewelry, pet, sporting goods, home decor.
Imagine an ecommerce platform that allows customer service reps to have a single view of a customer across all channels, a centralized order and inventory management system that can efficiently fulfill orders from all your sales channels, including brick and mortar stores, or utilize a customer's order history data to provide personalized and relevant offers. The possibilities brought to light with the advent of a complete ecommerce platform for business optimization and improved efficiencies as well as deepened customer engagement and satisfaction are limited only by one's creativity.